Why change management is necessary in the pharmaceutical industry

Ahead of Pharma IQ's OPEX Pharma conference in February 2023, we look back at this interview with Nadine De Decker, Director of Strategic Business Improvement at Johnson & Johnson, where she shares her insights on why change management is necessary within the pharmaceutical industry and how to ensure change is implemented successfully. 

Pharma IQ: Why is change management necessary within the pharmaceutical industry, and are there any change management models emerging as dominant?

Nadine De Decker: Organizations move through a change like individuals do. People travel up a “commitment curve” that defines the stages for building personal commitment to change, as organizations need to do. This change needs to be managed in all organizations and industries. Transformation projects do need to include change management regardless of the industry they are executed in.

I haven’t seen any models emerging. Traditional change management theories have been incorporated into their culture. As cultures are unique within industries and companies, we adopt a change management model to the culture. We have adopted the Kotter model like a number of other companies.

Pharma IQ: Should the pharmaceutical industry serve as a model for change management? Are challenges for successful change management harder in highly-regulated industries like pharma?

NDD: Pharma was an industry that was more static for a time, while other industries changed much more. So, I don’t know whether we should serve as a model. 

Regulations don’t make it harder to change, they are another set of customer requirements to take into account. As such you can say they add complexity because they are a stakeholder, but it can also be of an advantage to have them as a stakeholder as our industry needs to move at the same pace.

Pharma IQ: What are you doing to ensure successful change within your organization? 

NDD: To use a quote from John Kotter: "Skipping steps creates the illusion of speed and never produces a satisfying result". Each of the change stages has an invaluable impact on the success or failure of change.  We use a number of tools, as a way to help facilitate change at each phase. To drive change, you need a vision for the future, communication, feedback gathering and Just-in-time training. 

Over the last 15 years or so, several change models have been developed, fairly comparable but often with a slightly different focus or objective. We analysed the most common frameworks used outside and inside Johnson & Johnson, and our change management guide was developed based on the Leading Change framework by John Kotter.

Pharma IQ: What key lessons have you learnt from managing change management? 

NDD: Timed communication. Communication is sometimes too high level for too long, and on the other hand sometimes more detailed while the organization might be asking for it but is not yet ready to have it.

Use the case for change throughout the project. It can be used extensively at the start of a project, but people forget to tie back to it later on. This is the one thing we could have done differently. We had all the messages, just didn’t use them anymore over time. Even at implementation, there was still the question of why we were doing this. The need for a clear vision will make it easier for people to understand it, and get more people engaged. 

Leaders can get tired of delivering the message, they move on and deliver the next message. We need to realize that the message moves slowly through the organization, and make sure we have the right team in place to manage the change.

• This article was originally published on May 25th, 2018 and updated on November 23rd, 2022. 

Quick links

• Group class action: An emerging legal risk for pharma businesses
• The five biggest winners in pharma of 2022 so far
• The top 10 pharma companies on the 2022 Fortune 500 list

What advice would you give to an organization that is managing change? Let us know your thoughts and what you think of this interview in the comment box below.